Recycled Mini-Album Pages–More Family Photos

The final pages in the family photos section. All the photos were stuck down with regular matt gel medium.

Christmas

Here is a page dedicated to Christmas, showing my dad in fine form – he really enjoyed Christmas dinners, serving the wine, pulling crackers and wearing funny hats.

As a surgeon, he always did the carving and nobody else was allowed near it – I have never been good at carving, probably because I never had any practice! He always said the same things when beginning to carve a joint: “I’m not sure how to tackle this…” (this after many years of doing it) and “I’m not doing this very well – it’s a bit scrappy” (always perfect) and then the inevitable quote from Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Samuel Whiskers,” my absolute favourite of her books, in which naughty Tom Kitten decides to climb up the chimney to catch birds on the roof, but gets lost in amongst all the flues, and gets captured and tied up by the wicked rat Samuel Whiskers, whose wife makes him into a roly poly pudding. Stymied before she can cook this repast, SW remarks on the sootiness of the pastry, and utters the immortal words, “But I am persuaded,” (said Samuel Whiskers,) “that the string would have proved highly indigestible.” These were the words Dad always said when he cut the butcher’s string from a joint.

For the background of this page, I found a scrap of Christmas wrapping paper that was just big enough to cover both pages. It is really just brown paper, with holly leaves and berries printed on it. This was attached with regular matt gel medium. I added a few more with my white marker pen, along with the text around the photos. I quite like the border on this page, which is slightly reminiscent of the ends of crackers! It does have a touch of celebratory exuberance about it.

Family Festivals

The next page is dedicated to various family festivals, including my wedding (proud father of the bride), my niece’s 21st birthday (she is going to be the recipient of this album once it’s finished), my hubby’s 60th birthday lunch party, and my parents’ golden wedding (with my niece as a little girl, eagerly looking at the presents). These photos are obviously not in chronological order – it was just the best arrangement of the pictures to fit the page.

The addition of some doodled flowers and text, and the black and white border, completes the page. You will see how I have continued the shape of the border of the previous page.

On the right hand side in these photos you can see the edge of a photo sticking out – there are a lot of loose sheets between the final pages now, after I spent some time planning the layouts.

Holidays and Outings

The final page in this series is dedicated to holidays and outings. Obviously I couldn’t include every holiday and outing – this would require a book of its own, but this is a representative selection.

The first picture shows Dad and me on holiday in Iceland. This picture was taken by my American friend whom we met on the holiday.

Underneath is a picture of Dad on HMS Warrior in Portsmouth. We all had a lovely holiday together a few years ago in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

On the right are two pictures taken on an outing to South East Cornwall. Towards the end of Dad’s life before his dementia escalated, we used to take them out for the day. He is looking very old on these pictures – he had recently had his 88th birthday. This was the last major outing we took them on.

For the background and border of this page, I decided to use a weather theme, with sunbursts, clouds and raindrops. I drew all of this with my white marker pen, and then filled in with white acrylic paint, and added some accents in pale blue acrylic paint. The raindrops form the border of the larger page that follows. Look out for what I do with them on the next page!